Trump

Before you re-share an online article, before you give weight to its assertions—before you even begin to read the first line—ask yourself one question: “Does this look like a credible source?”

At a young age, I learned that I must first ask this question before citing to any given resource in a research paper or project. Accordingly, I learned where to look for reputable sources, how to determine which of these sources were credible, and the ways in which to best use these sources to locate further acceptable resources.

I was surprised when I learned just how frequently Internet users are duped into reading, believing, and ultimately re-sharing fake news stories. In the months immediately prior to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the top performing fake news stories generated more engagement than the top performing real stories published by major news outlets. These leading fake stories generated over 8.7 million shares, reactions, and comments on social media, while the leading stories published by major news outlets generated about 7.3 million similar reactions. Continue reading →

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During the early days of Donald Trump’s presidency, Twitter accounts purporting to represent unofficial “resistance” factions of federal agencies emerged and proliferated alternative perspectives on the inner workings of the Trump administration and its policies. These accounts claim to represent holdover factions from the Obama administration and career officials in agencies and government organizations such as the National Parks Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The accounts issued frequent tweets critiquing the Trump administration’s policies across a variety of issues. Agencies “represented” by “alternative” Twitter accounts run the gamut from the Department of Justice to NASA to the National Weather Service.

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It is more than cliché to observe that the advent and evolution of the internet has deeply transformed modern society in many ways, both micro and macro. Indeed, not a clearer example exists than the role social media played in the 2016 presidential election. With over twenty million followers on Twitter and nearly 35,000 tweets, Donald Trump leaned into this direct line to the masses to set a new high water mark for social media ubiquity in pursuit of the White House.

Though derided by many as misguided or un-presidential, it is undeniable that Trump’s avid use of Twitter has been and continues to be effective. Indeed his prolific social media presence was a key source of the estimated $2 billion in earned media that greatly contributed to his success. And now that he is president, do his characteristic early morning, sometimes scattershot flurries of 140-character missives count as official government records? In other words, are they subject to federal document retention laws?